Entanglement: A Modern Frankenstein | Creation

4.2 Misalignment

Austin, Texas | May | Lexa

(continued)

"Hi, Tristan," came a nasally welcome.

Lexa heard Tristan's footsteps quicken up the stairs to his bedroom office. It was more fodder for the knowledge base about Loretta's attraction to Tristan.

Lexa led them to the chairs by the fireplace, which served as storage for spare cables, boxes of white board markers, reams of paper and sundry office supplies. She devoted the next fifteen minutes to bringing them up to speed as they sat around their makeshift storage area. Lexa was more disappointed with the progress than they were or they were so uncomfortable with her own discomfort that even Loretta saw no need to be more disappointed. Still, Loretta needed to state the obvious, which Lexa had already laid out. With a tone of knowing she could do better if just given the chance, Loretta asked, "So, you're behind by a lot and you think you can get back on the schedule?"

"As I mentioned, yes. We are connecting more instances to the computer processor at a faster rate now. We've got algorithms that work much better. We've got some that have worked multiple times now. Having higher probability algorithms is progress because we know it doesn't require completely different ones each time. Still, there are adjustments and modifications we run, but the base algorithm is the same."

"Is there some common element to the algorithms? It seems like a lot of unnecessary code to maintain, right?" Loretta said, looking to Bradley for confirmation.

Bradley shook his head, though Lexa knew he had little to no code experience. He never asked complicated questions and he leaned on Loretta for most of the work. His unwillingness to look ignorant is why he would never arrive without Loretta.

"It's necessary. I assure you," Lexa answered with confidence.

"So you have to wait for each one? What if your internet breaks?" Loretta asked, looking at her pad.

Lexa cringed at her use of "breaks." Words like that revealed Loretta's lacking technical acumen to Lexa and the developers within earshot. Lexa once searched a phrase Loretta had used on numerous occasions and found it in the first paragraph of a wiki article about the subject. Hao, who was a wiki editor, submitted an edit to that phrase because the phrase was as incorrect as it was irksome. Steve started a pool whether Loretta would ever catch the change.

"We only build the code here. The code is running on various instances at Xeries tapping into the quantum computer at that same location. If our internet... goes down... we would merely lose visual to what is happening. The processes would be running fine. Not having access wouldn't stop anything. If need be, we could connect via another internet—like my phone—to check. Xeries has plenty of redundancy on the internet on the backend."

"You still trust Xeries, then?" Bradley asked. It was a standard question every visit. True to his mafia nature, he seemed to bear more on relationships, trust, reliability than technological jargon. Still, the question interested Lexa. Though she knew the answer should be "yes", it did make her wonder if Bradley knew something she didn't. It also gave her pause to question how much she was willing to trust them. The question of the developers percolated in her mind on that thought.

She also did not want to spell out or consider what might happen if Xeries had a power failure despite the redundancy. It would be devastating and would likely set her back to square one.

Satisfied with her "yes", Bradley added, "You've explained this before, but how would you explain it to the others at the company?"

Lexa smiled at the use of "company" to represent the organization for which he, and now by extension, Lexa, worked. Truth be told, it was a legitimate company, but it was run by a group—albeit in a complex arrangement of ownerships—that was formerly a criminal organization. Lexa liked to think "formerly", but suspected the other businesses still existed. Mining of cryptocurrency had proven to be an elaborate new approach for them. She suspected the anonymity of the transactions was also quite appealing.